


Survive and Rise

by codenametargeter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Conversations with hallucinations, Gen, Kylux in the past tense, Let Hux Take A Nap in 2018, Post-TLJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 21:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13062900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenametargeter/pseuds/codenametargeter
Summary: Armitage Hux is not handling the events of The Last Jedi well and whether or not he admits it, he could use the advice of a long gone mentor right about now.





	Survive and Rise

Armitage Hux was furious, humiliated, and exhausted although perhaps not in that order. 

In mere days, he'd watched everything that he'd worked so hard to build be knocked down and stomped upon thanks to the actions of a cocky pilot, some junkyard girl, and Kylo kriffing Ren.  _Supreme Leader Kylo Ren._  Even thinking those words made him want to vomit. Ren had claimed that the scavenger girl had been responsible for Snoke's death but Hux wasn't entirely sure that he could take those words at face value. Something had felt off about the carnage in the throne room that he'd walked into but he couldn't quite put his finger on how. It hardly mattered now.

As the door to his quarters slid shut behind him, Hux let out a sigh and allowed himself slump. An officer's posture came naturally to him but after the last few days, he found himself incapable of maintaining it within the privacy of his own room. He unfastened his tunic with one hand, rubbing the back of his neck with the other.  _Damn him_. His entire body ached thanks to being tossed around like a rag doll first by Snoke and then Ren himself. He couldn't believe that he'd ever allowed that overgrown child into his bed. They'd ended things well before Starkiller had decimated the Hosnian System but there had been a moment after he'd retrieve Ren's unconscious from the forest when he'd thought that perhaps there was another chance for them. No more. It was better this way.

Dropping his tunic carelessly onto a chair, he tugged off his well-worn officer boots and then poured himself a taller than advisable glass of Corellian whiskey and downing half of it before he'd even sat on the ice blue sofa. He took another more restrained sip and closed his eyes, trying to enjoy the taste even while despairing over the state of things. "Sloane, what the hell has your First Order become?" he asked aloud to the empty room

 _"What you've made of it_."

Hux's eyes snapped open and he looked around the room frantically but he was alone with nothing but his own failures and insecurities, which were apparently manifesting as his former mentor within his mind.

He could almost see Grand Admiral Sloane shaking her head. " _Well. Perhaps not you specifically, Armitage, but the First Order. We were doomed the minute you started building Starkiller."_

"But it worked!" he protested. "The entire Hosnian system wiped out and all it took was a single word from me."

_"And years of work and billions of credits."_

Hux ignored her. "We'd still be scrambling for more footholds in the Outer Rim if it hadn't been for Starkiller."

 _"And where is Starkiller now?"_   He grimaced.  _"That question wasn't rhetorical, General."_

"You're not even real!" he protested. 

Sloane shrugged.  _"You're the one talking to someone who's only in your mind now. The least you can do is answer my question."_

"It's gone."

_"How?"_

"The Resistance," he said dully. "They sent in a ground team to take down our shields and then used a squadron of starfighters against us." 

_"And how was the second Death Star destroyed?"_

Hux felt his lips curl into an unconscious sneer. "You haven't been my teacher in years, Admiral. I hardly need one now."

 _"I disagree._ "

"Well congratulations," he said, voice positively dripping with sarcasm. "I'm sure the galaxy cares deeply about the opinions of a dead woman."

_"Apparently you do."_

He downed the rest of his drink more aggressively than he should. "Fine. Perhaps in the wake of losing Starkiller Base and watching the throne go to a brat overly prone to temper tantrums, I find myself in need of advice."

Within his mind, he could see Sloane smile and sit back.  _"That's better."_

Despite himself, Hux rolled his eyes and rose and refilled his drink. The first had gone straight to his head and he could already feel the impending buzz. Usually, he tried to avoid allowing himself to fall into an inebriated state but after the last few days... He deserved this. Hell, he deserved a month's leave on a pleasant planet where no one had ever even heard of Kylo Ren or the Resistance. Instead, he’d have to settle for rapidly drinking expensive alcohol on his sofa. It hardly seemed a fair trade.

_"Self pity doesn't suit you, Armitage."_

Tilting his head back, he stared straight up at the ceiling. "No wonder my father thought me useless. Even my hallucinations chide me."

_"Have you considered that this could all be the kick in the rear you so desperately need?"_

"The _what_?"

Sloane ignored him. Fantastic. Creations of his own mind were ignoring him now. No wonder he wasn't on Snoke’s throne.  _"The definition of insanity is making the same mistakes repeatedly while expecting a different outcome. The First Order has done such with Starkiller and now you do so with the Resistance and even Kylo Ren."_

Hux frowned. "With Ren? How so? Aside from not shooting him in the head while he slept."

 _"Vision is always perfect in retrospect but no, not what I meant,"_  she said with amusement.  _"You expect him to behave differently than he is: volatile and impulsive."_

"I expect him to behave like an adult."

_"You expect him to behave like you. Don't."_

He took a drink. "Fine. So explain to me then how I am supposed to affect change in the First Order when I've been relegated to nothing more than a farce."

_"Do you remember Gallius Rax?"_

"Vaguely. He was... unsettling."

_"Why did I kill him?"_

"Because he turned the Empire into--ahh." Hux stopped talking abruptly as it clicked into place. The First Order had built Starkiller on the insistence of Supreme Leader Snoke who'd likewise clung to the idea of Ren as his own Vader. Ren's time on the throne had hardly been a rousing success either thus far. They were all too blinded by their own goals, himself included. A regime could not change when its leader would not. "You realize that he could kill me with a thought, yes?"

_"Dying sounds awful."_

"Oh shut up."

_"Manners, Armitage."_

"It's not like it's really you," he muttered into his glass. 

She sighed. _“That shouldn’t matter. Bide your time, Armitage. Watch him, keep your counsel, strengthen the First Order, and wait. A star like Kylo Ren may burn hot but he won’t last. Be there when he burns out.”_

“And until then?” Hux asked somewhat petulantly. “I bow and scrape and take orders from Supreme Leader Kylo Ren?”

 _“Yes,”_ Sloane said mercilessly. _“You survive, Armitage, and then you rise.”_

“Assuming that I _can_ survive all of this.”

_“You always have.”_

"I've missed you, Rae," Hux found himself admitting, feeling ridiculous at confessing such a thing to a figment of his imagination. "If you were here, things might be..."

 _"Maybe_."

"They would be," he said firmly, waiting a few moments for a response that never came. He finished his drink and then shut his eyes again as he set the empty glass down on the floor beneath him. Tonight, he’d allow himself a few more hours of weakness. It had been a trying week to say the least and he deserved evening of drunken stupor. But tomorrow… tomorrow he would start planning again and he would play the obedient general and wait. 

And then he would rise.

 


End file.
